The present invention relates to techniques for preparing a record of operations performed by a data processing system. More specifically, the invention relates to the preparation of a record through which a user can obtain access to data affected by the operations described in the record.
Trigg, R. H., Suchman, L. A., and Halasz, F. G., "Supporting Collaboration in NoteCards," Proceedings of the Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, Austin, Tex. Dec. 3-5, 1986, pp. 153-162, describe NoteCards, a hypertext-based idea structuring system in which the basic object is an electronic notecard. (Underlying features of NoteCards are described in greater detail in Halasz, F. G., Moran, T., and Trigg, R. H., "NoteCards in a Nutshell," CHI+GI'87 Conference, Toronto, Canada, Apr. 5-9, 1987, incorporated herein by reference.) Page 153 states that annotative and procedural activities are necessary to maintain mutual intelligibility between collaborators. Pages 156-158 describe collaboration through draft passing, in which History cards keep records of each entry into a notefile of notecards and of the changes made during a collaborative session. A History card is created for each session, titled with the date and initialed by each participating collaborator. As shown and described in relation to FIG. 1, the card's text contains brief descriptions of the work done in that session and links to the cards that were created or modified. All history cards are filed in a history filebox and are kept in chronological order, allowing one collaborator to review the work done by another and follow links to the affected cards.
Halasz, F. G., "Reflections on NoteCards: Seven Issues for the Next Generation of Hypermedia Systems," Hypertext '87 Papers, Chapel Hill, N.C., Nov. 13-15, 1987, pp. 345-365, describes the NoteCards system as well as a number of design issues for future hypermedia systems. Pages 361-362 discuss the issue of versioning, and mentions several types of histories, including linear version threads or other version graphs for individual nodes and links or for a set of nodes, a version history for all entities in a hypermedia network, and a layer mechanism collecting a number of changes. Pages 362-363 discuss the issue of collaborative work, mentioning automatic maintenance of change histories.
Jensen, A-M. S., Jordan, D. S., and Russell, D. M., "The IDE System for Creating Instruction," presented to Applications of Artificial Intelligence and CD-ROM in Education and Training Conference, Arlington, Va., October 1987, describe the Instructional Design Environment (IDE) built on the NoteCards system. Section 2.2 describes Autolink buttons that are used to make link connections between cards, reducing the number of mouse clicks required for link connection; an Autolink button can be set up to automatically create links to blank cards. Section 2.3 describes templates, which are cards of a type having a predetermined format. Copending, coassigned U.S. Patent Application Ser. No. 195,230, entitled "Accelerating Link Creation," filed May 18, 1988, now U.S. Pat. No. 4,982,344 which is issued on Jan. 1, 1991 ("the Autolink application"), and incorporated herein by reference, describes Autolink buttons and templates in greater detail.
Goodman, D., "The Complete HyperCard Handbook," Bantam Books, New York, 1987, pp. 32-34, 65-67 and 185-192, describes the Recent navigation aid and linking in HyperCard. Pages 32-33 show how Recent shows miniature representations of the last forty-two unique cards viewed; the user can go to any of the represented cards by providing a mouse click on that card's representation. Page 67 points out that a link can take extra steps to eliminate manual searching on a user's part. Pages 187-188 describe hard links that take the browser from one card to another without any other kind of action and soft links performed by a HyperTalk script. The section starting at page 188 describes link creation using the Link To . . . button and the Button Info dialog box.
Garrett, L. N., Smith, K. E., and Meyrowitz, N., "Intermedia: Issues, Strategies, and Tactics in the Design of a Hypermedia Document System," Proceedings of the Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, Austin, Tex., Dec. 3-5, 1986, pp. 163-174, describe Intermedia, a hypermedia system for multiple users. Section 2 on pages 163-164 describes links between selections within documents, explaining how an instructor reading a report can leave comments, criticism, and suggestions for revision through annotation links, which the student who prepared the report can then see while revising the report. Section 5.4 on page 173 describes several possible ways a system could respond to a user's changes in documents, including passive notification via a facility such as electronic mail, informing users that there had been changes to documents since they last opened them.
Lewis, B. T. and Hodges J. D., "Shared Books: Collaborative Publication Management for an Office Information System,"ACM Conference on Office Information Systems, Mar. 23-25, 1988, pp. 197-204 describe collaborative publication management for an office information system. Page 198 states that publications have a revision history, and that it is desirable for a publication management system to be able to reproduce older revisions of a document. Pages 199-200 describes the Shared Book window, shown in FIG. 1, in which information is displayed including an entry's lock status, revision number, creation date, and notes such as status information or comments entered by a worker. A change on one workstation is not immediately broadcast to all others, but updating occurs on the next user action. The Entry Details property sheet, providing detailed information about an entry, is shown in FIG. 2 and described on page 200. Page 201 describes an automatically managed data file in the remote Shared Book that supplies the data displayed in the Shared Book window. Page 202 describes job management functions, including Notes and Reasons fields that can be used to hold both procedural and annotative information.
Kasperski, R., Chang, E., and Mellon, L., "Cantata: Group Protocols in a Conferencing Environment," IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Vol. 2, 1986, pp. 1343-1346, describes a multi-person message exchange system called Cantata. As described at pages 1343-1344, each Cantata participant has a complete history of the conversation, and a new participant entering a conversation is given a complete history of the conversation among the other participants. A participant may review by scrolling within a window.
Stefik, M., Bobrow, D. G., Foster, G. Lanning, S., and Tatar, D., "WYSIWIS Revised: Early Experiences with Multiuser Interfaces," ACM Transactions on Office Information Systems, Vol. 5, No. 2, April 1987, pp. 147-167, describe multiuser interface techniques including meeting tools called Boardnoter and Cognoter. Page 159 describes features of Cognoter that use reduced scale stamps to show when changes are made in corresponding full-scale windows; a bar attached along an edge of a stamp can be initially white and can become progressively darker as changes accumulate. To identify recent changes when a participant refocusses on a window, recent changes can be highlighted. Page 162 describes an overview room with miniaturized active images of rooms in which subgroups are working, with indicators showing how much change there has been and where the activity is from moment to moment. Page 163 describes a facility for highlighting recent changes in a room, making it possible to overlay privately needed annotations on information in public windows.
Leblang, D. B. and Chase, R. P., Jr., "Computer-Aided Software Engineering in a Distributed Workstation Environment," in Henderson, P., (Ed.), Proceedings of the ACM SIGSOFT/SIGPLAN Software Engineering Symposium on Practical Software Development Environments, Pittsburgh, Pa., Apr. 23-24, 1984, describe DSEE, a software development environment. Beginning on the second page, a section describes history management, explaining how a History Manager inquires about the reasons behind a change made by a user, then records that information, along with the date/time, node id, and person's name in the history database. The third page describes how history files are stamped with an object type unique identifier (UID).